Don't Do Everything Yourself
When we tried to analyze the various jobs the GM (traditionally) has in an RPG, we took a cue from some certain Indie games, and experimented with redistributing those jobs amongst the group a bit. Among the tasks that are traditionally the GM's are the description of environments the characters arrive in / pass through / visit for the first time, and the handling of mechanical tidbits '''of whatever System you happen to be using... If you '''Don't Do Everything Yourself, however, you can save a lot of energy on such tasks. This energy can then be dedicated to other areas of the game, such as playing an important NPC in that scene, looking up a rule that you expect might soon come up, or secretly thinking about your imminent storytelling options while the players are kept busy entertaining each other for a while.) Whether it is the description of a new location, the tracking of fictional or mechanical resources (gold, hitpoints...), or the handling of fiddly bits of the system (tracking initiative order), some aspects of the GM's job can be savely deposited in the hands of the players - under certain circumstances. (For the portrayal of NPCs done by players, see Cast of Thousands, a special case of Don't Do Everything Yourself) . Examples: Employ a Tourguide When our party visits the half-ruined capital city of the minotaur nation in the middle of the Eternal Grass Sea, the GM asks the player whose backstory is connected with the minotaurs and their city to describe to the group what the place looks like, who is likely to be found there, and what the general mood and atmosphere is like. (In our case, the character in question decided to give the rest of the party a tour through the city, narrating various details as he did so... while the GM and one other player were having a solo scene apart from the others.) (cf. scenes run by players) Employ an Inimayer Whenever we have combat encounters, one player assumes the role of "Inimayer". It's the Inimayer's job to keep track of initiative during the combat. This is complex enough in D&D (with typically rather many opponents, each with their own ini rating, in each fight), but try having a combat in Shadowrun or World of Darkness - where on top of the very real possibility of multiple opponents per fight, everybody's initiative changes every round. Having an Inimayer take care of this base-yet-complex task frees the GM up considerably to think about other things relevant to combat (such as NPC tactics, special powers or events, environmental effects, cool narration of combat actions, etc...) Employ some other '-mayer' For example, we have had Flight-Height-mayers for combats in D&D 3.5 where a lot of flyers were involved (and tracking how high each one of them flies is relevant in 3.5's combat system), Buff-Duration-mayers (to track how long the various buffs and debuffs last in a combat), Enemy-HP-mayers (to save the GM the work of subtracting the HP for every stroke the characters land against any one of their many enemies, one player would just note down how much damage any given enemy had already taken, periodically informing the GM of "The Ogre Mage has taken 82 dmg now - any signs of it weakening anytime soon...?", to which the GM would reply with either "nope", "getting pale now", or "yep, he goes down" after just a quick look on his own notes.) and Equipmentmayers '''(whose job it was to keep track of what everyone (including the party's mule) was wearing and carrying and how maxed out they were on their carrying capacity) in our crunchier games... '''When to do this and when not to: